CREATIVE PLACEMAKING IN BROOKLAND-EDGEWOOD, WASHINGTON, D.C.:
A MODEL FOR CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
INTRODUCTION
Placemaking enables communities to create change for and made by the local community rather than by the wealthy powerful who make developments into profit. Placemaking can be used as a citizen participation model to combat gentrification in cities. This mode of citizen participation transfers the power from city developers to the people of the local community. This mode of citizen participation gives vulnerable communities of low-income people, people of color, immigrants, and/or other marginalized groups to engage in shared community ownership and organization to fit the needs of residents rather than the wants of private developers. Considering that shared public spaces are vital for community happiness and development, placemaking can be used as a tool to maximize the value from public spaces and empower the citizens who control them.
The relationship between self and society is largely determined by the environments in which individuals live. Citizens can participate locally to take some level of control over their own environments and thus lives. Creative Placemaking can be used as a citizen participation model that mobilizes neighborhood residents to address the needs of the community.
While Creative Placemaking led to greater mobilization and participation in community affairs in the case of the Brookland-Edgewood neighborhood in Washington, D.C., it is a relatively new citizen participation model that must be further observed and researched.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Self and Society: Neighborhood and Place
It has long been understood in the field of Sociology that individuals are shaped by their environment just as much as they shape their environment. In arguably one of the most important and well-known books in Sociology, The Sociological Imagination, author C. Wright Mills discusses the sociological imagination, which explores the relationship between self and society. Mills believed that sociologists and ordinary people should employ the sociological imagination by situating individuals in their larger historical and social context. He writes, “…What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family, neighborhood…” (Mills 2). The role of the environment is clearly significant for the development, aspirations, and outcome of an individual, rendering institutions like, family, geography, and government major dimensions of the relationship between self and society. Neighborhood and place are where interactions between individuals, interactions between individuals and institutions, and interactions between institutions occur on the daily. These individuals can take shape their own environments, becoming active members of their community by using their interactions with others and with institutions to created shared public spaces that influence their outcomes. As defined by Project for Public Spaces, a leader in Placemaking advocacy, “Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, Placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value” (Project for Public Spaces).
Levels of Citizen Participation
Arnstein describes the different levels of power in citizen participation in forming these outcomes. In “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” she categorizes levels of citizen participation into a hierarchy of power. She creates 8 rungs of the ladder, which she puts into three umbrella categories, to represent differing levels of citizen power in determining the end result. From bottom to top, these categories are nonparticipation (manipulation and therapy), tokenism (informing, consultation, placation), and citizen power (partnership, delegated power, and citizen control). She explains that both the powerless citizens and the powerholders have “significant roadblocks to achieving genuine levels of citizen participation” (Arnstein 5). The powerholders may face “racism, paternalism, and resistance to power distribution,” while the citizens face an inadequate political socioeconomic infrastructure for the poor as well as difficulties in organizing a representative, accountable group (Arnstein 6). The top rung of the ladder, citizen control, offers the highest level of power in the citizen participation model. She best describes this rung as a level of power in which “guarantees that participants or residents can govern a program or an institution, be in charge of policy and managerial aspects, and be able to negotiate the conditions under which ‘outsiders’ may change them” (16). She notes that the most commonly advocated model of citizen control is the absence of intermediaries between a neighborhood and its sources of funds (16). She cites several examples of federal government-funded community control programs in U.S. cities led by citizen stakeholders in mostly poor black communities, who have historically been excluded from systems of power (Arnstein 16-17). Arnstein argues that that residents have amassed “a significant degree of power” in the Model Cities programs, action plans will include the creation of entirely resident-governed community institutions who will work with a set budget given to them (17). These programs “might begin to demonstrate how to counteract the various corrosive political and socioeconomic forces that plague the poor,” Arnstein writes (17). She says that the success of these programs and future citizen participation programs depend largely on the city governments’ willingness to allocate more resources to the poor, which would reverse the “gross imbalances of the past” (17). Creative Placemaking is a process that sits near the top of Arnstein’s citizen participation ladder within the category of citizen power, but not at the top rung of citizen control.
Citizen Empowerment
Sociologist John Gaventa expands upon Arnstein’s and Saxena’s ideas in “Towards Participatory Local Governance,” making six propositions on “the meanings of citizenship and of participation,” “the role and relevance of ‘the local,’” and “the problem of governance itself” (253). His first three propositions are most relevant to individuals’ participation in their communities. Gaventa’s first proposition is “relating people and institutions.” He cites the Voices of the Poor report in the World Development Report 2000/2001, which concludes that poor people around the world consider large institutions, specifically state institutions, to be unaccountable to them and unresponsive to their needs (254). Other studies echo these conclusions, finding that citizens have distrust in their governments due to corruption, unresponsiveness to the needs of the poor, and the lack of connection and participation with its citizens (254). By this line of reasoning, large institutions and specifically state institutions must come up with policy solutions that encourage participation from its people and restore trust in the government. State institutions and the people can engage in partnerships to properly address the needs of the community.
In his second proposition, Gaventa examines the methods of deepening democratic governance. He starts with the focus on strengthening citizen participation, which he describes as “the ways in which poor people exercise voice through new forms of inclusion, consultation, and/or mobilization designed to inform and to influence large institutions and policies” (255). Th other method was on strengthening institutions’ and policies’ accountability and responsiveness by changing the design of the institutions itself. He argues that these two methods must go hand and hand to create effective citizen participation (255). The third proposition is about reconceptualizing participation and citizenship. This is where Mill’s theory of sociological imagination should be applied, as it asks sociologists to think about the relationship between the self and society in another light. He gives the example of electoral politics being considered the end-all solution to people’s participation in government, as elected representatives’ jobs are to hold the state accountable. The individual, Gaventa argues, serves as the “periodic elector” of these elected officials, who act as intermediaries between the citizens and the state (Gaventa 256). The relationship between citizens and the state, however, must be based in participation and inclusion for citizen participation to effectively occur (qt. in Gaventa 256).
In order for there to be an educated citizenry, individual citizens must have the knowledge and tools to engage with their community directly rather than simply act as the “periodic electors” of elected intermediaries to the state. In “Spaces for Change? The Politics of Participation in New Democratic Arenas,” Cornwall and Coelho argue that there cannot be substantive participation unless the people recognize themselves as citizens rather than beneficiaries or clients (8). They write, “Acquiring the means to participate equally demands processes of popular education and mobilization that can enhance the skills and confidence of marginalized and excluded groups, enabling them to enter and engage in participatory arenas” (Cornwall and Coelho 8). Cornwall and Coelho also write about concerns that mobilization alone will not equip marginalized or excluded actors with the skills to effectively communicate with one another (13). Unless these concerns are directly addressed in models of citizen participation, marginalized and excluded groups will not have the resources necessary to enter into participatory arenas. For marginalized people to participate, they must first consider themselves citizens of their communities.
N.C. Saxena similarly argues for the expansion of people’s roles in their communities. He defines what people’s participation should look like in his article “What is Meant by People’s Participation,” stating, “Participation should include the notions of contribution, influencing, sharing, or redistributing power and control, resources, benefits, knowledge, and skills to be gained through beneficiary involvement in decision-making” (Saxena 31). He believed people’s participation was when all people, including those of marginalized communities, were in a position to influence or directly control the very decisions that affect them (Saxena 31). In order to carry out participatory action, people must be able to organize themselves and be able to identify their own needs. Saxena lists three outcomes of participation—learning how to best solve societal problems, empowerment through leadership, self-initiation, and mobilization of resources, and organization-building by supporting and strengthening local organizations (32-33). In contrast to Cornwall and Coelho, who argue that learning, empowerment, and organization-building must happen before participation, Saxena characterizes these three as outcomes after participation. Cornwall’s and Coelho’s as well as Saxena’s frameworks for people’s participation can be applied specifically to citizen participation in placemaking processes. Placemaking encapsulates learning, empowerment, and organization-building from beginning to finish.
Origins of Placemaking
The placemaking movement had its influence from activist Jane Jacobs, who is considered one of the early pioneers of placemaking. In her widely influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs writes about her bottom-up approach to urban planning, arguing that great cities must have characteristics like primary mixed uses, “eyes on the street” on sidewalks, and most importantly, a transfer of power to residents from powerful politicians and urban planners. She writes, “They have to fight it out with each other, and with officials, on the plane where the effective decisions are made, because this is what counts in winning” (Jacobs 126). She argues that “‘decision-making’ motions with hierarchies and boards at ineffectual levels where no responsible government powers of decision reside, vitiates political life, citizen effectiveness and self-government” is a play at self-government rather than the real thing (Jacobs 126). In other words, Jacobs characterizes ‘decision-making’ processes within a hierarchical power system as non-participation, at the bottom of Arnstein’s citizen participation ladder.
Public Spaces: Who Benefits?
In Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, Samuel Stein writes about the political force of real estate and its implications for gentrification in cities. Stein claims that the planner’s worldview was “to imagine what doesn’t yet exist while figuring out how to get there; to care about systems and processes, the way things work and the way they ought to” (7). Urban planners, too, adhere to the sociological imagination, constantly thinking about the ways in which urban residents’ interactions shaped the city and also how the city shaped people’s interactions. Urban planners, however, are increasingly being run by real estate interests, focused on maximizing profit to benefit the wealthy few who have land capital. Stein posits, “Until land is socially controlled, those who possess property, capital and access to power will shape planning priorities” (10). In our current state of private-public partnerships, people’s spaces will always be turned into profit. Through campaigns like “City Beautiful” across the U.S., new residential buildings were built for safety and aesthetics, which drove up property values and forced poor families and people of color out of the neighborhoods to live in unsafe conditions (19). Through practices like zoning and redlining, people of color, particularly black people, were displaced from working class neighborhoods, which were replaced with high-end residential and office towers (22). Stein argues that planners alone cannot separate real estate from politics. He calls for an “organized people: mass movements to remake our cities from the ground up, and gain control over our homes and lives” (Stein 12). Advocacy planners rose to combat the displacement of black people by rejecting the top-down approach of planners viewing the city from up high and instead advocating for community-based plans created by neighborhoods (Stein 23). He notes the paradox that “Public improvements become private investment opportunities as those who own the land reap the benefits of beautiful urban design and improved infrastructure” (39). Even when public improvements are made in a community, they only benefit potential investors and drive out the very people they were supposed to serve. Advocacy planning thus provides an alternative that separates urban planners from the pressures of real estate investors and puts the power and money into the hands of the community members who are most vulnerable of getting displaced. Placemaking is an example of advocacy planning.
In “Strengthening Community Sense of Place through Placemaking,” authors Ellery and Ellery summarize findings about placemaking, concluding that placemaking may be effective in strengthening the ties between members of the community with the places they reside in, empowering them to take a more active stance in planning their communities. Author Cara Courage, in her TEDxIndianapolis presentation “Placemaking and Community,” affirms Ellery and Ellery’s findings, also seeing placemaking processes as tools that put the community “at the front and center” of change. This change happens through a social horticulture that allows them to have conversations about and become experts in the shared spaces of their community, a main goal of placemaking processes.
CASE: CREATIVE PLACEMAKING IN BROOKLAND-EDGEWOOD, D.C.
VIDEO: Brookland-Edgewood, DC Creative Placemaking Case Study
The Kresge Foundation, an organization that funds community development projects, including this case, defines Creative Placemaking as “the deliberate integration of arts and culture into comprehensive community development, can serve as a critical catalyst in forming equitable living and working solutions for all the social, economic, and racial constituencies of a neighborhood” (1).
The Brookland-Edgewood Case in Washington, D.C. is an example of a successful Creative Placemaking project. Dance Place is a nonprofit organization established in 1980 comprised of a community of artists, audiences, and students. In 1986, they bought an empty warehouse in the neighborhood and became one of the only cultural institutions on 8th Street. Their Creative Placemaking efforts were implicit until they were awarded a grant for the Arts Park development from the Kresge Foundation (The Kresge Foundation, “Creative Placemaking Case Study: Brookland-Edgewood” 13). Today, Dance Place offers performances, commissions, and inclusive training and educational programs regardless of participants’ ability to pay.
Brookland and Edgewood are adjacent cities separated by the Metropolitan Branch rail line. The Brookland-Edgewood neighborhood has low-income levels and high crime rates, more so for Edgewood than for Brookland. They have a population of 19,050, 82% of which are African American. The median income is $56,000. 15.7% live in poverty (The Kresge Foundation, “Brookland-Edgewood, DC Creative Placemaking Case Study”). As the community was going through economic development, real estate values drove up, raising concerns that community members would be driven out of their neighborhood. Starting in 2005, the District of Columbia Department of Housing and Community Development partnered with Artspace Projects to create a project that now is the Artspace Lofts building and Dance Place to provide living and working space for artists (The Kresge Foundation, “Creative Placemaking Case Study: Brookland-Edgewood” 4). Over the next decade, other stakeholders participated in multiple community development projects in the neighborhood.
Google Maps. 2017. 8th St NE Brookland-Edgewood Neighborhood. Google Maps, [online].
In 2016, Dance Place finalized their Arts Campus with the 8th Street Arts Park, located in the asphalt alley between their building and the Brookland Artspace Lofts. Their campus now includes “three training and rehearsal studies, a 144-seat theater, two offices, a children’s center, the 8th St Arts Park and housing for artists and interns” (Dance Place, “Missions, Values, and History). The Art on 8th free outdoor programming, which includes affordable and free performances, workshops, and recreation, takes place on the Arts Park.
The four main players in the Brookland-Edgewood Creative Placemaking case are the District of Columbia Office of Planning (DCOP); Dance Place; Bozzuto Development, Inc; and the Brookland-Edgewood residents. Dance Place is only one stakeholder in the broader mass of Creative Placemaking projects in the 8th St Arts Corridor, which is at the intersection of three neighborhoods: Brookland, Edgewood, and the Catholic University of America (CUA) campus. Dance Place, Arts Walk, and Monroe Street Markets has revitalized the community and brought visitors through their creative solutions.
ANALYSIS
Blighted Spaces to Vibrant Communities
According to the Kresge Foundation, the Brookland-Edgewood case has succeeded in protecting cultural identity, bridging social differences, and elevating the voices residents. Dance Place, one of the main cultural leaders in the neighborhood, was able to create cross sector partnerships with local businesses, local government agencies, and developers to engage in deliberate Creative Placemaking processes. Today, Dance Place draws over 50,000 annual visitors to the area through their dance and performance programs (Arts.gov).
Even today, residents take advantage of their neighborhood’s creative processes, such as the performances and classes given at Dance Place. Creative Placemaking allowed residents to directly engage with their communities and change the environments that shape not only their everyday interactions but also their futures. When applied to Mill’s sociological imagination, Creative Placemaking provides an actionable framework in which people can influence their environments and take control of their own outcomes to some extent. Because environment and physical place are crucial indicators in individuals’ levels of fulfillment, well-being, and futures, the element of control is a powerful tool in shaping communities.
In the TEDxCoeurdAlene talk “Creative Placemaking,” Blair Williams argues that this type of Placemaking is typically applied to blighted spaces in which people do not want to visit, go to, or use. Carla Perlo, Founder and Artistic Director at Dance Place, describes that there were no notable public spaces in the Brookland-Edgewood neighborhood prior to the establishment of Dance Place on 8th Street. Brookland-Edgewood fits Williams’s definition of blighted spaces. Through Creative Placemaking, Dance Place and other cross-sector actors were able to take non-distinctive elements of the neighborhood and turn it into landmarks which represented the creative community of the Brookland-Edgewood residents. In fact, Dance Place’s permanent home on Brookland-Edgewood’s 8th Street was transformed from an abandoned warehouse in 1986 to the community center that it is today. Jacobs wrote, “Centers of use grow up in lively, diverse districts, just as centers of use occur on a smaller scale in parks, and such centers count especially in district identification if they contain also a landmark that comes to stand for the place symbolically and, in a way, for the district” (130). Dance Place is a symbol for the vibrant, creative community within the Brookland-Edgewood neighborhood. It became a place with mixed uses, a characteristic Jacobs argued great cities must have, by falling back on the creativity of the community.
The Community Benefits, for Now
Placemaking allows the members of the community re-imagine places they live and work in, analyzing the “physical, cultural, and social identities” that define them and can thus change them for the better. Creative Placemaking sits near, but not at, the top of Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation. The members of the Brookland-Edgewood had access to cultural and social identities through the spaces that were made available to them. The citizens themselves are one of the four main players in the cross-sector partnership. They interacted directly with Dance Place, local government agencies, and developers to advance creative processes that they could access and interact with without being displaced. The DCOP and Bozzuto Development had control over the funds used for Creative Placemaking projects, with community members being able to collaborate and give input. The community members’ participation does not fit into the top rung of Arnstein’s ladder, citizen control, because they did not have direct control over the funds used for such projects. They were still in a place of citizen power through partnership. Dance Place served as a mediator which eased vertical tensions between the real-life concerns of community members and the visions of the planning and development sectors. Brookland-Edgewood had action plans constrained by a budget given to them, similar to the neighborhoods part of the program. In their case, the DCOP were willing to allocate funds to be used specifically for the benefit of the current residents of the neighborhood. The funds provided to Dance Place allowed them to create inclusive dance classes and public events, even for those who could not afford them.
Creative Placemaking was used to combat gentrification by considering the needs of both the people in the community and developers. Samuel Stein wrote that private investors used public improvements to draw wealthier people into the neighborhood, ultimately leading to the displacement of the very residents who were to benefit from said improvements. Through Creative Placemaking as a community advocacy framework, public improvements within Brookland-Edgewood were used to keep residents in rather than drive them out. The Kresge Foundation cautions, however, that while the stakeholders in the Creative Placemaking process have and still are engaging in respectful dialogue, the horizontal tensions between culture-based and economic-based values cannot be completely eradicated (The Kresge Foundation, “Creative Placemaking Case Study: Brookland-Edgewood” 13). Especially with the increase in visitors in response to creative changes in the community, there may be unintended socioeconomic impacts in the neighborhood, as Creative Placemaking is still a relatively new, deliberative process.
Outcomes of Participation
The Brookland-Edgewood case also embodies Saxena’s idea of people’s participation, as citizens directly tailored developments for their community’s own needs. This mobilization in turn led to the strengthening of local organizations and the development of the local economy. Two central questions Saxena poses in “What is Meant by People’s Participation” are “Why participate?” and “Who participates?” (32). He argues that there is limited knowledge about the costs and benefits of participation, yet people are more likely to participate when benefits outweigh their costs (Saxena 32). Cornwall and Coelho echo Saxena, writing that the community members must first recognize themselves as citizens capable of change before meaningful participation.
There is a clear juxtaposition between the need for individuals to understand the costs and benefits of participation and the resources they have to make informed decisions on changes that directly affect them. In the Brookland-Edgewood case, there was no indication that the community was informed of the changes that would be made to their community before the three other stakeholders—Dance Place, DCOP, and Bozzuto Development, Inc.—proceeded with new cultural additions. Although these cultural additions, which included a community dance center and low-income housing for artists, were beneficial and made available to the existing neighborhood residents, it is unclear that they had any say in whether the additions should be made; rather, they participated by recommending what activities they would like to see within the already established public spaces. For instance, Dance Place founder Carla Perlo attended many community meetings and asked local residents and businesses what they would like to see in their programming. There was never any guarantee that the residents’ concerns would be reflected in these public spaces and programs. This concern coincides with Saxena’s second question: “Who participates?” He argued that all people should participate, but only those who attended the meetings or were asked for their opinions participated in the Dance Place projects.
Effective Citizen Participation Through Institutions and People
The relationship between institutions and people is a central deciding factor for the success of participatory local governance. Brookland-Edgewood is a neighborhood with a high rate of poverty. Gaventa argues that poor people distrust the government due to unresponsiveness and lack of connection between the state and its citizens (254). The government is unresponsive to the needs of poor people. In the Brookland-Edgewood case, the DCOP set aside funds for creative placemaking processes and held community meetings for residents to voice their concerns and how they would like the money to be used. The community members were given a seat at the table through a partnership three other main stakeholders: the local government, nonprofit organization, and a private developer.
Gaventa’s second proposition concerns methods deepening democratic governance. Effective citizen participation must include strengthening poor people’s voices in addition to strengthening the accountability and responsiveness of institutions to these voices. A two-way commitment is required between the state and the citizens, and DCOP took the first step towards deepening democratic governance by facilitating input-gathering sessions which first started in 2008 for the Brookland/CUA Metro Station Small Area Plan and later to include an arts and culture element, specifically Creative Placemaking, into the DC Comprehensive Plan in 2011 (The Kresge Foundation 4, “Creative Placemaking in Brookland-Edgewood).
CONCLUSION
Creative Placemaking enabled Brookland-Edgewood residents to become part of a policymaking process that prioritized their needs through art and culture. The partnership between the DCOP, Dance Place, Bozzuto Development, and the Brookland-Edgewood residents allowed for the neighborhood’s creative scene to flourish. The existing residents have access to Dance Place’s workshops and arts projects regardless of ability to pay. There are public spaces for the community to gather together.
In spite of the apparent success of the Brookland-Edgewood case, Creative Placemaking still has its concerns. In this case, the residents did not have complete citizen control; rather, they had citizen power through partnership with the DCOP. This case did not meet the criteria for meaningful participation by of Cornwall and Coelho, who stipulated that participants must perceive them as active citizens shaping policy rather than as beneficiaries of changes by the state. Citizens, especially marginalized or excluded actors, must be equipped with the resources to build skills and to effectively communicate with one another.
The Brookland-Edgewood case by no means included all voices in the community. It is apparent through the successes of this case, however, that Creative Placemaking provides greater opportunities for ordinary citizens to shape public spaces in their communities. This case foreshadows an optimistic future for citizen participation and community-building through creative processes.
References
Arnstein, Sherry R. 2011. “A ladder of citizen participation”, pp. 3-18 in Andrea Cornwall (editor). The Participation Reader. New York: Zed Books.
Cara Courage, speaker. 2017. Placemaking and Community: Cara Courage: TEDxIndianapolis. YouTube, TEDx Talks, youtu.be/Sfk1ZW9NRDY.
Cornwall, Andrea. 2011. “Whose voices? Whose choices? Reflections on gender and participatory development”, pp. 203-223 in Andrea Cornwall (editor). The Participation Reader. New York: Zed Books.
Dance Place. “Mission, Values, and History: Dance Place.” 2020. Dance Place | Dance Classes and Performances in Washington, DC, 15, www.danceplace.org/about-mission-and-history/.
Ellery, Peter J., and Jane Ellery. 2019. “Strengthening Community Sense of Place through Placemaking.” Urban Planning, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 237–248., doi:10.17645/up.v4i2.2004.
Gaventa, John. 2011. “Towards participatory local governance: six propositions for discussion”, pp. 253-264 in Andrea Cornwall (editor). The Participation Reader. New York: Zed Books.
Google Maps. 2017. 8th St NE Brookland-Edgewood Neighborhood. Google Maps, [online].
Jacobs, Jane. 2020. Death and Life of Great American Cities. The Bodley Head.
Kalugin, S. 2017. “Street View & 360 °.” From Google Maps.
The Kresge Foundation. 2017. Brookland-Edgewood, DC Creative Placemaking Case Study. YouTube, The Kresge Foundation, youtu.be/gC9aC3pgVis.
The Kresge Foundation. The Kresge Foundation, Creative Placemaking Case Study: Brookland-Edgewood, npnweb.org/wp-content/uploads/DancePlace_Kresge_CaseStudy_Brookland-Edgewood.pdf.
Marcos Barinas, Architect and Founder of RECUA (Caribbean Urbanism and Architecture Network), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Presentation “Guidelines Development on child-friendly housing projects and recommendations for the public and private sector in the Dominican Republic”
Mills, C. Wright. 2016 [2000]. “The Sociological Imagination. The Promise” in McGann, Kimberly (ed.). SAGE Readings for Introductory Sociology. LA / London/ New Delhi / Singapore / Washington DC / Boston: SAGE, pp. 1-8
Stein, Samuel. 2019. Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State. Verso.
Saxena, N.C. 2011. “What is meant by people’s participation”, pp. 31-33 in Andrea Cornwall (editor). The Participation Reader. New York: Zed Books
Williams, Blair, speaker. 2020. Creative Placemaking: Blair Williams: TEDxCoeurdalene. YouTube, TEDx Talks, youtu.be/Fc0frpN4U1g.